


Burn the Skies Down

by morrezela



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Blindness, Canon Disabled Character, M/M, Making Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 10:50:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13611816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: The world was saved, and Noctis was somehow alive. He found his advisor out on the Citadel's steps, enjoying a sunrise that he couldn't truly see.(Written for Ignoct Week 2018. Day 2: Burn the World for You/Noctis learns what happened in Altissia.)





	Burn the Skies Down

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ignoct Week 2018. Day 2: Burn the World for You/Noctis learns what happened in Altissia.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

The morning air over Insomnia was cold. Sunrise was a brilliant riot of gold and red and even purple down at the very edge of the horizon. If not for the lack of birds singing in the air and the missing sound of traffic, Noctis might almost miss it for any morning.

But beautiful and tragic as the morning itself was, Noctis was far more interested in looking at the man backlit by it. Ignis had always been an early riser, at least when Noctis had known him. But who knew if that was still true? Seeing the sun for the first time in years would surely drive anyone out of bed.

Off at the other end of the courtyard, there were a few glaives roaming about. Lucky ones who escaped the meat grinder that had been Insomia the night – the day before. Noctis had expected more crying at first, but he supposed losing those close to you was just a normal part of life for those left in the world. Between daemons' killing sprees and the horrific inevitability of some being turned into daemons, the world had become accustomed to death. Noctis needed to make sure it became unaccustomed to it.

The thought made his eyes travel back to where Ignis was sitting. The years hadn’t changed his profile one bit. Prompto had once joked that Ignis could be a model. The suggestion had made Ignis flush and stammer before dismissing it as “utter nonsense.” But Noctis had always sided with Prompto in that fight, even though he’d never said anything.

He’d worried about all his friends when he left them to face Ardyn. Gladio, he figured, would live. Prompto was always quick on his feet. Ignis was deadly, but… Noctis took a deep breath and forced his gaze away from his advisor.

It wasn’t the blindness, not really. So long as there were no motor vehicles involved, Ignis could probably still kick Noct’s ass in a sparring match if he wanted to. Noctis had spent ten years absorbing mystical powers. Ignis had spent them fighting demons. Technical skill in combat had to favor Ignis even if Noctis had more power.

Political savvy also favored Ignis. Noctis knew how to be king, but kings could only be kings if they had advisors wily enough to monitor the right things to get the right information. They could not do it alone.

No, it wasn’t Ignis’s abilities that Noctis questioned. He could never, would never do that. But Ignis’s life was tied inextricably to his own. Noctis wasn’t sure he could remember a time before Ignis, and he doubted even Ignis could remember much of the time before him.

Noctis didn’t think it was ego to say that the loss of his life would devastate Ignis most of all. Gladio had family, and Prompto knew what it was like to live alone. Their lives hadn’t been built solely around Noctis since a very young age. Now that Noctis looked back on it, he wondered what his father had been thinking. It seemed unfair to ask a child to accept a role he couldn’t possibly have understood.

“Are you going to stand there staring?” Ignis asked.

“I, uh, um.” Noctis was aware he didn’t sound very kingly, stammering like a child who had been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

“Come. Sit,” Ignis ordered. He extended his arm out and left it hanging in the air.

It took Noctis a moment to understand why he was doing that, but that moment didn’t seem to affect Ignis’s offer. So Noctis found himself walking down the steps and sitting down next to Ignis. The arm stopped hanging in the air and curled about his shoulders, tugging him right against Ignis’s side.

“What are you doing up so early? As I recall, you rather hate mornings,” Ignis observed. “Is this some new leaf you’ve turned over?”

“A new leaf I’ve turned over after a decade of floating inside a magical crystal?” Noctis shot back without thinking. He could feel the way Ignis’s body tensed next to his, but thankfully he didn’t withdraw his arm.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t not mean to speak so carelessly to you. I realize all of this must be quite difficult for you to adjust to,” Ignis apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” Noctis told him. He looked down at his hands, trying to ignore the mark the ring had put on his ring finger as it burned into nothingness. He didn’t understand why he was back. He had the uncomfortable memories of shattering into a million pieces, and he didn’t know how or why he was alive and breathing.

Ignis didn’t say anything in return, but his arm did tighten ever so slightly in response before easing back. It was nice, that arm. It felt solid and real. It chased away the feeling of being pieces instead of a whole person. They sat in silence for a moment while Noctis tried to stop thinking about shattering.

It was Ignis who broke the silence though. “Noct,” he sounded hesitant as he began to speak, “would you do me a favor?”

“Of course. Whatever you need,” Noctis promised.

“What does the sky look like?”

The request tugged at Noctis’s heart. He stared at Ignis’s face for a moment before looking at the sky. “Uh, yellow mostly, aside from the blue parts of course. Then orange and red. Some of the orange parts look like that hot pinky-orangey color that your ‘going out’ shirt had. You know the one you bought because Gladio said you couldn’t wear your work clothes out with him for his birthday party?”

Ignis smiled. “I do recall the shirt. It was quite expensive, but entirely worth the look on Gladio’s face whenever I wore it.”

The tugging sensation turned into a lurch in his heart at the sight of Ignis smiling. It had been a rare sight before. He couldn’t imagine it had become a more frequent one when the darkness fell. So he treasured it in that moment. “There were streaks of purple earlier, but they’ve already gone,” he said, voice soft.

Ignis tilted his head to the side. “By the sound of it, quite a spectacular sunrise. It sounds like you did quite well.”

“Ignis,” Noctis hissed. He was mortified at the thought. “I didn’t, I don’t know, set the sky on fire.”

The laugh that escaped Ignis sounded strangled. “Set the sky on fire?” he echoed, “Do you not know how sunrises work?”

“You know what I meant,” Noctis huffed.

“I do,” Ignis admitted as he sobered, “and while you are refreshingly modest about it, I dare say you might deserve to have some amount of pride in your accomplishments.”

“Maybe I’ll build a statue of myself then. Like the old kings did,” Noctis suggested purely to see the look on Ignis’s face. The sheer horror that crossed it made him want to laugh.

“You are incorrigible,” Ignis said. His arm disappeared from around Noctis’s shoulders to playfully shove against him.

It wasn’t a very hard push, and it was meant in fun. But it jarred Noctis’s back even so. The pained gasp he let out was small, but Ignis heard it anyway. It was evident in the concerned, “Are you alright?” he uttered not a second later.

“I’m fine,” Noctis assured him. “You’d just think coming back from the dead would have more perks.”

Ignis made a strained sound in his throat, and Noctis reflected that it was probably too soon to be making jokes about death. He opened his mouth to apologize, but was cut off by the feeling of fingers skimming down his back. That feeling was immediately replaced by the feeling of the hem of his shirt being rucked up as those fingers slid underneath it.

“Ignis?” he squeaked.

Ignis didn’t answer with words. Instead, his fingertips began stroking over the small of Noctis’s back. Skin and leather scraped lightly across the scarred skin of his back. It was like those fingers were magnetized to the knots of muscle and scar tissue he had there, magically coaxing them into submission.

The moan that came out of Noctis’s lips was more than just relief. It was embarrassing, and it was improper. Even though the glaives had moved off somewhere, and there was nobody else nearby, Noctis shouldn’t be getting a hardon on the steps of the Citadel. He was shocked that Ignis would even think to do such a thing in such a place. But he supposed that the world had changed Ignis too.

“Your back is a mess,” Ignis informed him.

“Yeah, I know,” Noctis snapped without any heat.

Ignis hummed in a sympathetic tone. “You really need to get these knots out, or you’re going to become bedridden.”

“What, are you a doctor now?”

“No, but I do have a fair amount of experience in muscle injury these days. It’s frighteningly common among the general populace let alone those who take on hunting contracts. Though, none is quite as bad as yours has ever been,” Ignis allowed.

It wasn’t something they talked about, not really. Noctis’s convalescence. That time where he couldn’t feel anything in the lower half of his body. The time afterwards where he struggled to even walk again, and especially not the time he spent before then when he was trapped in the horrors of his own mind. 

Ignis had never truly asked about it, though Noctis was sure he knew far more than he ever let on. As Ignis had taken on more and more duties and made the work of others obsolete, he had become well acquainted with the most debilitating of Noctis’s injuries.

He covered for Noctis on the days when Noctis woke up, and his right leg just didn’t want to move. He drove Noctis to neurology appointments and physical therapy sessions. And when there just wasn’t time, he would rub the knots out of Noctis’s back just like the hideously expensive massage therapist did. It was something hidden from the public so that they could have a sense of security about their future king, and it was something that had gotten better with constant treatment over the years.

“You know, you were something of an inspiration to me those first few years,” Ignis confessed. “The world was a frightening, maddening place, and here I was blind in the middle of it. I have never felt quite so helpless as I did then. I did not wish to be a burden, but I could not simply stand by and do nothing.”

“So you focused on keeping the world together until I could come back?” Noctis guessed.

“No. I fear I did not have so altruistic an outlook as you would ascribe to me. I thought about being eleven years old and fearing that you would break apart if I so much as looked at you the wrong way. About how small you were for your age.”

Noctis remembered the time. There had been an endless parade of doctors when he and his father returned from Tenebrae. His birthday that year had been a somber affair. Going from eight into nine had not seemed like so great an achievement after seeing so many people just die before his eyes.

There had been whispers about stunted growth and concerns about puberty. Arguments over various treatments would invariably fall into questioning the future. Noctis hadn’t cared about puberty. He’d only wanted to walk again.

“Well, lucky for me they were wrong about the need to induce puberty,” Noctis joked. He didn’t say more. Didn’t speak about how he never grew quite as tall as his father. About how he got warm easily and cold even more so. About how his nerves sometimes just sent signals they shouldn’t.

The hand rubbing his back stilled. “My point is that you didn’t allow the fears of experts to hold you back from learning to walk again. And you didn’t let your injury keep you from growing up into one of the finest men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. So, how could I allow my eyes to hold me back?”

Noctis blamed the sun for the watering in his eyes. “Damn, Iggy.”

“I’ve made you uncomfortable, my apologies,” Ignis said, his hand slipping from Noctis’s back.

“Hold on,” Noctis blurted out. “I didn’t say that. And anyway, you’re on retainer. You’re supposed to cater to my whims, and my whims say I could use more back rubbing.” He closed his mouth with a snap. He sounded like an idiot.

“As Your Majesty commands,” Ignis replied. He sounded amused, but his hand returned to rubbing gently against Noctis’s skin. “Though I must say, I might need to ask for a renegotiation on my contract. I haven’t been paid in quite some time.”

Noctis let out a chuckle. “Well, if we can’t come to terms, I’m sure you’ve got a future in massage.”

“Ah, yes. I can see it now. Scientia’s Spa and Grill. It will be quite the attraction. Naked, oiled bodies covered with hot rocks, and steaks cooked in a similar manner,” Ignis teased. “One must wonder if I’ve been doing a poor job this entire time. Everyone keeps suggesting new career paths to me.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Noctis assured him. “I wouldn’t be here if not for you. If not for all of you, but… you especially. I guess I never really thanked you for that before.”

“It’s quite alright. You had a great many things on your mind,” Ignis reminded him.

“Yeah. But so did you, and I should’ve said something,” Noctis berated himself.

Ignis sighed and shook his head a little. “And what would you have said? ‘Thank you, Ignis. Thank you for stealing the power of my family’s ring!’” The words sounded bitter and mocking.

Noctis felt a little alarmed. “You know I don’t think that, right?”

“I do,” Ignis acknowledged. “I also know that you should think it.”

“You saved me!” Noctis argued.

Ignis pursed his lips. “It was not altruism that drove me,” he admitted, voice low and ashamed.

“It sure as hell wasn’t power, because you’d be a pile of ash otherwise,” Noctis responded.

“I would have given the ring to Ardyn,” Ignis confessed. “I would have done anything to save you in that moment. Anything at all.”

“Ardyn didn’t want the ring, Iggy. He didn’t take it,” Noctis consoled him.

Ignis shook his head, his hand slipped from Noctis’s back to curl his arm protectively over his stomach. “I did not know that. I could not know that. All I knew is that he meant to kill you. Or that he meant to make me think he meant to kill you. It does not matter either way. I thought he was going to kill you, and I would have done anything to stop him.”

“And I’m supposed to be mad about that why?” Noctis asked. “How can I be upset over you wanting me to stay alive?”

“Intention matters as much as results do,” Ignis said. It was an old lecture. Noctis had heard it a thousand times if he had heard it once. He did his best not to roll his eyes at it.

“So what was your intent?” he asked instead. “Were you going to save me because you wanted to lock me up in a sex dungeon somewhere?”

“No!” Ignis sputtered. The tips of his ears turned red, and Noctis doubted it was because of the sun climbing ever higher in the sky. Though that probably would be a problem sooner rather than later. Ten years without the sun meant sunburn was going to be a risk for a while.

Ignis took a breath. “Maybe a little.”

“Excuse me?” Noctis felt like he could be tipped over with a feather in that moment.

“Not like that,” Ignis reassured him.

“How many ways are there to want to lock somebody up in a sex dungeon?” Noctis asked. He wasn’t sure which was more confused, his brain or his dick. And boy was he glad Ignis couldn’t see his dick, because it kind of liked the idea of being locked in a sex dungeon with Ignis. Or at least locked in a room where sex happened with Ignis. He wasn’t sure if he really liked the dungeon part.

“My wording was poor,” Ignis explained. “I do not and have never had the impulse to abduct you or lock you away for sexual pleasure. Nor do I have sadistic or masochistic sexual tendencies. Not that there would be a problem should I have them so long as I had a willing partner. Which you were not. Or could not have been, not the least because you had no idea of my…”

“Ignis,” Noctis interrupted. “You’re rambling.”

“Right. Of course. My apologies. I simply meant to say, that I was terribly in love with you. I thought you to be the most beautiful of men, and I would have truly set the skies on fire if it meant saving you in that moment.” Ignis hunched his shoulders as if bracing for rejection even though he’d asked for nothing.

“Wow,” Noctis mumbled.

Ignis snorted. “Is that truly all you have to say?”

"What am I supposed to say after that?” Noctis asked. “‘Hey, I think your face is nice,’ doesn’t sound like the compliment it did an hour ago. ‘You give me erections,’ is worse, and those are the only other things I could think to say!” 

If he thought Ignis was red before, it was nothing to the shade he was turning now. He rivaled the red sky that he burned away while they were talking.

“Noctis!” he managed to say, sounding scandalized as he said it.

There was, Noctis discovered, a small comfort in finding that Ignis was just as uncomfortable as he was. “I do like your face though,” he said. “It’s pretty.”

Ignis pulled off his glasses to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I should have listened to Gladio.”

“About what?” Noctis asked.

“He said that you had no skill at giving compliments, and he was right,” Ignis said.

“Okay, fine. I’m not good at that,” Noctis agreed. “But at least I said it. Do I get points for that?”

“No, because there are no points,” Ignis informed him. He looked just a bit less mortified now.

Noctis wanted to argue that there were always points, but there were more important things to be talking about. “So, when you say you _were_ in love with me, is that just appropriate word choice because you’re a stickler for grammar? Or are you done with that now?”

“Do not ask me that,” Ignis pleaded.

“I already did.”

“I adore you,” Ignis’s voice broke as he spoke, “and I would give a thousand rings to a thousand Ardyns if it meant I could keep you near me always.”

“You know, usually it only takes one,” Noctis teased him even though he couldn't get his tone just right. 

Ignis scowled anyway. “I cannot say about your beauty though. For all I know you might look like an older, meaner version of Cid.”

Noctis gaped at him. “I don’t look like Cid.”

“If you say so,” Ignis taunted.

Noctis couldn’t let that go. He took Ignis’s hand between his own, and tugged off its ever-present glove. He brought the hand up to his face. Thankfully, Ignis didn’t need to ask instructions for Noctis didn’t think he could have given them.

Long fingers traced over his forehead first, teasing at his hairline, then slipping down to stroke over his eyebrows. “Haven’t started losing your hair yet,” he observed.

Noctis didn’t reply, his throat felt oddly tight.

Ignis rand the back of his hand down the side his face first, then turned around to run his palm over it. He repeated the process on the other side of his face before running his fingers around the underside of his jaw.

Noctis was tempted to bite at the fingers that danced over his chin and traced the outline of his lips. He wanted to pull them into his mouth, but he didn’t. And he didn’t have much of an opportunity to do so either because Ignis moved on to trace the outline of his nose before brushing across his cheek and cupping the side of his face.

“You’ve grown facial hair,” Ignis commented.

“Yeah. Part of the Crystal approved makeover,” he explained.

“You must look a great deal like your father now,” Ignis observed.

“I don’t want to think about my dad right now, Iggy.”

“Nor do I,” Ignis confessed. His voice was rough. Noctis wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard it like that before.

It was a simple matter to just lean forward and kiss him. It wasn’t a good kiss. Ignis wasn’t at the right angle, and he hadn’t been expecting it. Noctis felt mortified. But Ignis apparently didn’t feel that way as his hand reasserted itself on Noctis’s face, and his other hand curled around the base of Noctis’s skull. With gentle pressure, he guided him into just the right position.

And, oh, that was much, much nicer. Ignis didn’t hold back with his kisses. His tongue wasted no time in pressing against Noctis’s lips, and Noctis wasn’t about to deny him something they both wanted.

Ignis’s hands drifted downwards as they kissed. They brushed over his neck and slid over his shoulders. They caressed the way down his back, and gentled as they went over the part of his back they had been touching earlier.

Noctis had vague thoughts about taking the same kind of tour of Ignis’s body, but he kept getting distracted. His dick was pressing uncomfortably against the confines of his pants, and his brain felt like it was short circuiting. Hanging on to Ignis’s shoulders seemed like the best course of action if he didn’t want to embarrass himself.

Then Ignis was tugging on him, like he was trying to pull him even closer even though they were already as close as they could be without being in each other’s laps. But the lap thing seemed to be Ignis’s plan because Noctis found himself sort of half straddling Ignis’s leg to stay upright.

It wasn’t a comfortable position, but his dick was pressing against Ignis’s thigh. It would be mortifying to have Ignis know just how hard he was if not for the fact that he knew Ignis was in the same position. He knew because his hand had found its way to the front of Ignis’s pants, and there was something wonderful there.

Noctis might have felt guilty about groping Ignis’s dick so quickly, but Ignis’s hands were cupping his ass now that it was no longer sitting on the hard, cold stone. He was obviously okay with some nice touching.

It was wonderful for a few seconds before Noctis tried to shift and ended up banging his knee on the stone steps. “Ow,” he whined as he pulled away from Ignis’s mouth.

“Are you alright?” Ignis asked, concern furrowing his brow.

“Fine,” Noctis said. “Maybe making out on the stairs wasn’t a good idea.”

“You’re likely right,” Ignis agreed. “Though… I do hope that we might reconvene this conversation inside?”

“Were we having a conversation? Didn’t seem like a lot of talking was going on there?” Noctis teased.

Ignis sighed and shook his head in what Noctis knew to be a fond manner. “Don’t make me regret asking you back to my room.”

“Did you invite me there?” Noctis asked. He didn’t remember that invitation. He was pretty sure he would have remembered that invitation had it been given.

“Not yet? But I was planning on it,” Ignis informed him as he rose and started walking back up the steps.

Noctis watched him walk for a while, enjoying the sight of him and how the early morning light highlighted his every move.

“You coming?” Ignis called over his shoulder a moment later.

Noctis laughed and bolted up the steps after him.


End file.
